


The Song That Saved Me

by RiaHawk



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Act 5 spoilers, Gen, captors are motivated by spite, screw her imperial condescension, the glub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 19:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13417908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiaHawk/pseuds/RiaHawk
Summary: As Battleship Condescension sets course to respond to the unexpected attack destined to annihilate the Homeworld, the Helmsman can hear something the Condesce can't...





	The Song That Saved Me

He seemed to have always known his final actions would be motivated by nothing but pure spite.   
  
He was unsure if that had just been because of his own personality, or because of the situation he'd been placed in, or some dim premonition. At this juncture, it really didn't matter.  
  
To the untrained observer, he would have been thought luckier than other helmsmen. Every other helmsman in the fleet had their minds erased entirely, losing their memories and their personalities. The Condesce had found it pleasing that he should retain some shard of awareness of who he had once been, and why he was there. It had seemed like a kindness at first.  
  
The Condesce never did anything kind.  
  
There wasn't much of his mind left anymore, most of it replaced by telemetry, astrogation, communications, and the thousand other systems that were his duty to maintain. But there was a small fragment of his original self left, wrapped in a seething shell of white hot hate that had never been successfully expunged.  
  
He _remembered_. At least a little bit.  
  
He couldn't remember ( _his? her?_ ) name anymore; he couldn't even remember his own. He had access to the trial records, of course, because the Condesce thought he should be allowed to 'reflect upon his transgressions'. He knew what the verdict had been. He even had dim memories of being forced to watch as the one who had shown him the way was tortured to death. But the Signless's name had been stricken from all records. All that was left to him now as actual memory was the vague recollection of the Vast Expletive, and slicks of bright red blood.  
  
It had taken psionic inhibitors of the highest caliber to restrain him at the farce of a trial. Towards the end, even that would not have sufficed if he hadn't been directly forced into compliance by a ranking cerulean blood.  
  
His own sentencing he had received with more aplomb. He had always known what his fate must be if their secret rebellion had failed... and he had always known the chances of failure were high.  
  
That didn't mean he had _accepted_ it.  
  
He had fought as hard as he could for every single step of the process. It might have only been delaying the inevitable, but they could never say that he let them take him without a fight. He made them _work_ for every single one of the four hundred and thirteen hours of the installation process.   
  
It had been an excruciatingly painful process, and was something that stood out clearer than most things of that era. His shackles had been welded to the ship's frame to hold him in place while the shipworms did their work, building their nest around and inside of him. The shipworms had rewired his entire nervous system, connecting it to the helmsman's harness and the ship's systems. 'Unneccesary' anatomy and bodily functions were removed in the most brutally efficient way possible. Once fully installed, he was entirely dependent on the ship's life support systems. He would die if disconnected.  
  
He had felt every instant of it.  
  
The reprogramming had been its own brand of terrible; he was force-fed mind honey in doses every day while an elite programmer systematically tore his mind down to replace it with the obedience, loyalty, and skills expected of a Helmsman.  
  
He'd fought that one _hard_ , and some part of him still remained untouched, though it was the tiniest of shards. But that shard had long been buried under the hyper-efficiency demanded of the Helmsman of Her Imperial Condescension's flagship. Sometimes even he forgot it existed.  
  
But that was then.  
  
He had known something unprecedented was happening, even before he started receiving the urgent communications from other sectors of the Empire. And then he _did_ receive the unexpected, terrible message, and understood its import as he dutifully relayed it, in his perfectly modulated speech, stripped of even its quirk millennia ago.  
  
"Condesce, I am receiving reports that the Homeworld is under attack."  
  
Specifics were demanded. _Who would dare?_ Unknown. _How did they pass through the armada without attracting notice?_ Unknown. _How were they attacking?_ Meteors of varying sizes and of indeterminate source were suddenly falling on the Homeworld in ever increasing numbers. _What was the planetary defense system doing?_ Presumably being destroyed.  
  
The Condesce was enraged. He suspected not for any love of her people or concern for their well-being, but more at the temerity of anyone who would _dare_ to touch what was hers. Orders were screamed and efficiently relayed. The entire fleet was to return to the defense of the Homeworld at once. Her flagship would immediately return to spearhead a counter attack.  
  
He dutifully set the course, and showed no visible reaction as the Condesce increased the painful endorphin stimulus to force him to bring the ship to a greater speed than he ever had before, and overrode the warnings that his life support was failing. As was expected.  
  
But there was a song he could hear, over the scream of the astrogation system and the chatter of the comms. His sensory input had been rerouted to the ship's sensors during his installation, and all he could perceive physically was exactly what the sensors could pick up. But the Condesce had never had him truly deprived of his vision two-fold, and now he heard the song of the doomed and dying louder than it had ever been. It was the song of the whole troll race, reaching a crescendo that would have shattered anyone else had they been able to hear it.   
  
He could hear his own voice, singing a song of sweet release.  
  
There was something else under it all. A horrible inaudible _thrum_ he could almost feel drove the song of the doomed before it like a wave, radiating out from the Homeworld. And as it passed, the song abruptly ceased.   
  
Comstations abruptly went dark and stopped transmitting.  
  
He knew what was coming. The doom of the troll race wasn't directly the unexpected attack, but the psychic death-rattle of the Condesce's monstrous lusus, which only one troll could ever feel without perishing. It would be here in a matter of seconds, traveling at the speed of thought.  
  
He thought and processed much faster than he ever had before he was installed. He reviewed the options at his disposal practically instantaneously. He could reroute main power and major systems through the backup redundancies. Any biological batteries on board would of course die when the Glub hit them, but there were strictly inorganic systems in place in case of just such an emergency. Her Imperial Condescension would have to pilot the ship herself manually, but if the systems were routed properly, it would be a trivial matter. His programming practically insisted.  
  
He might have even done it if he hadn't already known there would be no one left to save.  
  
He couldn't trigger the self-destruct sequence; only his acting captain could initiate it. And he couldn't shut down the life-support systems or the impulse power generation. But if he released an unshielded psionic surge as a purely reflex action, it would fry the astrogational matrix and ninety-eight percent of the non-biological power generation. That wouldn't stop her from piloting the ship back to the Homeworld... but it would inconvenience her the hell of a lot.   
  
And that's exactly what he did, a millisecond later when the first edge of the Glub hit him.   
  
Terminals blew with a really satisfying shower of sparks. A communications array activated, and somewhere in that hidden part of himself that still remained, he found his quirk again.   
  
"from the depth2 of hell, ii 2tabbeth thee biitch"   
  
The last sound he heard before the Glub ruptured his noise tubes was his own cracked laughter, turning into gasps as he choked on his own blood. It took less than a second, but that was more than enough time to savor the look of bewildered fury on the Condesce's face.  
  
It hurt much more than he had expected it to.  
  
But it didn't last long.  
  
And then he was free of the useless shell of his emaciated, wire-riddled body, reaching for the hands of the three figures that seemed to have appeared out of the nothingness of space, with the wide white eyes of the dead.  
  
He was back where he belonged.


End file.
